Change agent's contribution to recipients' resistance to change: A two-sided story

In the change management literature, most studies on recipients' resistance to change include only the views of agents or of recipients, thereby ignoring that these parties may have different perceptions. In this quantitative study, we include the perceptions of both parties in studying the recipients' resistance and the impact of the agent's leadership behavior. In a sample of 117 agent-recipients groupings, covering 110 different change projects in 90 organizations, we found that agents perceive higher levels of recipients' resistance than do the recipients themselves. Additionally, we found that agents who create space to enable recipients to think and act differently (by employing creating behavior) report higher levels of recipients' resistance, whereas recipients perceive their resistance to be lowered when agents facilitate an emotional connection to the change (framing behavior). The depth of the change appeared to moderate the relationship between agent's leadership behavior and recipients' resistance, indicating that agents and recipients differ in which change leadership behaviors they perceive as increasing or decreasing resistance at different levels of change depth. These findings imply to reconsider the relationship between agent and recipients and we propose some promising avenues for future studies in resistance research.     

Leadership,creativity, and innovation: A critical review and practical recommendations

Leadership is a key predictor of employee, team, and organizational creativity and innovation. Research in this area holds great promise for the development of intriguing theory and impactful policy implications, but only if empirical studies are conducted rigorously. In the current paper, we report a comprehensive review of a large number of empirical studies (N?=?195) exploring leadership and workplace creativity and innovation. Using this article cache, we conducted a number of systematic analyses and built narrative arguments documenting observed trends in five areas. First, we review and offer improved definitions of creativity and innovation. Second, we conduct a systematic review of the main effects of leadership upon creativity and innovation and the variables assumed to moderate these effects. Third, we conduct a systematic review of mediating variables. Fourth, we examine whether the study designs commonly employed are suitable to estimate the causal models central to the field. Fifth, we conduct a critical review of the creativity and innovation measures used, noting that most are sub-optimal. Within these sections, we present a number of taxonomies that organize extant research, highlight understudied areas, and serve as a guide for future variable selection. We conclude by highlighting key suggestions for future research that we hope will reorient the field and improve the rigour of future research such that we can build more reliable and useful theories and policy recommendations.     

The effects of leadership change on team escalation of commitment

Although teams benefit from developing plans and processes that boost efficiency and reduce uncertainty, they may become too attached to these plans and escalate commitment when an alternative response is needed. Drawing on theories of team leadership, team processes and escalation of commitment, we propose that a change in leadership can help the team reduce commitment to outdated plans and avoid further escalation over time. Across two studies, we tested and found support for our hypotheses and provide evidence that leadership change can break the cycle of escalation by enhancing leader-driven team reflection and refocusing the team on error correction instead of additional investment. We discuss how the results of these studies extend existing theory and add to our understanding of the important role leaders play in enhancing team adaptation and preventing team escalation.     

Leader individual differences,situational parameters,and leadership outcomes: A comprehensive review and integration

In this article, we provide a wide-ranging review of recent research on leader individual differences. The review focuses specifically on the explosion of such research in the last decade. The first purpose of this review is to summarize and integrate various conceptual frameworks describing how leader attributes influence leader emergence and leader effectiveness. The second purpose is to provide a comprehensive review of empirical research on this relationship. Also, most prior reviews primarily examined leader personality traits; this review includes a broader array of leader attributes, including cognitive capacities, personality, motives and values, social skills, and knowledge and expertise. The final broad purpose of this paper is to review and integrate situational and contextual parameters into our conceptual framing of leader individual differences. Few, if any, prior reviews have systematically accounted for the critical role of such parameters in cuing, activating, or delimiting the effects of particular leader attributes. We do so in this article.     

Capturing hearts and minds: The influence of relational identification with the leader on followers' mobilization and cardiovascular reactivity

The influence of relational identification (RI) on leadership processes and the effects of social identity leadership on followers' responses to stress have received scant theoretical and research attention. The present research advances theoretical understanding by testing the assertion that high RI with the leader drives follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress. Two experimental scenario studies (Study 1 and Study 2) support the hypothesis that being led by an individual with whom followers perceive high RI increases follower intentional mobilization. Study 2 additionally showed that high (vs. low) RI increases follower resource appraisals and cognitive task performance. A laboratory experiment (Study 3) assessing cardiovascular (CV) reactivity showed that, compared to neutral (i.e., non-affiliated) leadership, being led by an individual with whom participants felt low RI elicited a maladaptive (i.e., threat) response to a pressurized task. In addition, relative to the low RI and neutral conditions, high RI with the leader did not engender greater challenge or threat reactivity. In conclusion, advancing social identity leadership and challenge and threat theory, findings suggest that leaders should be mindful of the deleterious effects (i.e., reduced mobilization and greater threat state) of low RI to optimize follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress.     

Leader negative feedback-seeking and leader effectiveness in leader-subordinate relationships: The paradoxical role of subordinate expertise

From a motivational perspective of feedback-seeking behavior, we examined the mediating role of leaders' negative feedback-seeking from subordinates in the relationship between the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) and subordinates' evaluation of leader effectiveness, along with the moderating role of subordinate expertise in the mediated relationship. Using 151 unique matched sets of leader and subordinate reports obtained from 5 large Korean companies, we found that the positive relationship between LMX and leader effectiveness was mediated by leaders' negative feedback-seeking. Additionally, the positive relationship between LMX and leader negative feedback-seeking was stronger when perceived subordinate expertise was lower. Lastly, the indirect effect of LMX on leader effectiveness through leader negative feedback-seeking was stronger when perceived subordinate expertise was lower. These findings were obtained after controlling for leaders' power distance and goal orientations that might influence their motives to seek or avoid feedback. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Global Innovation Networks – Organizations and People

Innovation is increasingly the outcome of global networks that connect geographically dispersed knowledge centers. The international business (IB) literature has developed a sophisticated understanding of the multinational enterprise (MNE) as an organization generates value by integrating knowledge across national borders. We advance this literature by making three key arguments. First we highlight the three megatrends that shape the strategy of the modern MNE: the disaggregation of the value chain into ever narrower activities, the migration of value to knowledge-intensive intangibles and the rise of huge emerging markets like China and India, whose domestic firms can grow to enormous size before venturing abroad. Second, we trace these three megatrends to falling spatial transaction costs, enabled in the main, by digitalization. Third, we draw on earlier research on the generic forms of global linkages, arguing that the IB literature has limited itself to organizational pipelines, while paying relatively little attention to personal relationships. The latter are particularly important in the genesis of both entrepreneurship and radical innovation, but are particularly sensitive to the anti-globalization policies. An environment where technology continues to reduce spatial transaction costs, while policy raises them, strengthens large MNEs at the expense of innovative international new ventures.     

From design to operations: a process management life-cycle performance measurement system for Public-Private Partnerships

Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) have become a critical vehicle for delivering infrastructure worldwide. Yet, the use of such a procurement strategy has received considerable criticism, as they have been prone to experiencing time/cost overruns and during their operation poorly managed. A key issue contributing to the poor performance of PPPs is the paucity of an effective and comprehensive performance measurement system. There has been a tendency for the performance of PPPs to be measured based on their ex-post criteria of time, cost and quality. Such criteria do not accommodate the complexities and lifecycle of an asset. In addressing this problem, the methodology of sequential triangulation is used to develop and examine the effectiveness of a ‘Process Management Life Cycle Performance Measurement System’. The research provides public authorities and private-sector entities embarking on PPPs with a robust mechanism to effectively measure, control and manage their projects’ life cycle performances, ensuring the assets are ‘future proofed’.     

Examining Facilitative Configurations of Entrepreneurially Oriented Growth: An Information Processing Perspective

This study examines how the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm growth is shaped by learning orientation in technologically sophisticated environments. We draw upon an information processing perspective that emphasizes alignment between information processing demands and support mechanisms. Using data from 116 small to medium‐sized enterprises in the Netherlands, we observe that the ability of entrepreneurial orientation to drive firm growth greatly depends on the joint consideration of technological sophistication and learning orientation. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of how configurations of strategic orientations and environmental considerations work in concert to influence the efficacy of organizational entrepreneurial efforts dramatically.     

Constructing Trustworthy Historical Narratives: Criteria,Principles and Techniques

Organizational scholars increasingly recognize the value of employing historical research. Yet the fields of history and organization studies struggle to reconcile. In this paper, the authors contend that a closer connection between these two fields is possible if organizational historians bring their role in the construction of historical narratives to the fore and open up their research decisions for discussion. They provide guidelines to support this endeavor, drawing on four criteria that are prevalent within interpretive organization studies for developing the trustworthiness of research: credibility; confirmability; dependability; and transferability. In contrast to the traditional use of trustworthiness criteria to evaluate the quality of research, the authors advance the criteria to encourage historians to generate more transparent narratives. Such transparency allows others to comprehend and comment on the construction of narratives, thereby building trust and understanding. Each criterion is converted into a set of guiding principles to enhance the trustworthiness of historical research, pairing each principle with a practical technique gleaned from a range of disciplines within the social sciences to provide practical guidance.